September 23, 2014
Dear Members and Coworkers,
We’re all busy making final preparations for what should be the most joyous, relaxing and fulfilling time of year, the Feast of Tabernacles. As we do, we’re being hit with an onslaught of news putrid and disgusting enough to cause an immediate visceral reaction. How incredibly disappointing it is to see none of the passion, the urgency or resolve we know is necessary at a time like this out of the only institution capable of leading a confrontation of the ISIS threat. Instead we’re treated to one lecture after another insisting that there is nothing Islamic about the Islamic State.
Surely it was heartening to find out that bombing runs against ISIS targets in Syria had commenced and that five Arab countries had taken part in the action, supplying warplanes and pilots. Unfortunately, the “bomb terrorist targets in Syria” plan had already been telegraphed and debated in public for at least a couple of weeks. It is impossible to know the extent of the air campaign’s effectiveness at this time.
Over the weekend past, we’ve been treated to the scenes of 45,000 Kurds fleeing across Syria’s border with Turkey, and that’s just one of many aspects of the abject brutality that has been inflicted upon everyone in the path of the ISIS blitzkrieg. We’ve all had the images of American journalists and the British aid worker kneeling patiently against a barren backdrop, awaiting a hideous death at the hands of a hooded, knife wielding executioner emblazoned in our minds. We know that ISIS has vast monetary resources, and is raking in additional millions per day selling stolen Iraqi oil on Turkey’s black market. We see reports that the ranks of the terrorist army have doubled in only a few short months, that they are expert at manipulating every platform of social media to reach and convert additional terrorist conscripts.
But we have just seen news of another disastrous defeat of the Iraqi army at the hands of ISIS. Terrorists were able to enter an Iraqi army base in the western Anbar province in captured American Humvees, with the Iraqi guards believing that they were bringing expected supplies. The Humvees then served as car bombs at locations around the base, and the whole facility came under attack from ISIS forces. As many as five hundred may have been killed or captured according to eyewitness accounts to a Washington Post reporter, though the Iraqi government says casualties were few.
Thankful as we may be that an air campaign is underway in Syria, and ISIS targets have been hit in Iraq, the stories above provide a glimpse into the scope of the problem that has been allowed to develop in the vacuum left behind in the wake of the hasty and ill-advised removal of U.S. forces only one year ago.
Yet another terrorist faction has gained public attention in recent days, Khorazon. We’ve been hearing whispers of new types of explosives incapable of detection by current security measures, and a plot to use them to attack western aviation. Khorazon is reported to be the faction, made up of veteran al Qaeda terrorists involved in that plot, and we’re told that some of the air-raids in Syria were in fact aimed at Khorazon.
Up to this point the administration has stammered in low tones about training and arming some indigenous proxy force. But not about raising the minimum wage, mind you. When it comes to the redistribution of wealth, the speeches get loud and passionate. The current administration is champing at the bit to legitimize five million illegal aliens, just as soon as possible after the mid-term elections. Obviously the move will generate outrage and anger across the demographic spectrum, and it just wouldn’t be right to burden the president’s allies in Congress while they’re campaigning to extend their careers. And who wants to know how many among that number are here on an expired visa from some terrorist hotbed? Asking a question like that would likely crush the ambitions of some enterprising reporter. Officials either don’t know, don’t care, or it’s none of the public’s business. On top of the Central American flood of adult and children illegal aliens, already secreted all over the U.S., news reports claim there is another massive influx en route and due to arrive within days. Still, nothing has been done to put a stop to it. You don’t suppose the rare respiratory disease sweeping numerous states could have ridden that rickety train, or crossed the Rio Grande? We were warned of this possibility.
At the time of this writing, the president is expected to make a statement at the UN, no doubt to herald Arab participation in the air war against ISIS. But the reason for the UN confab was to work on some international agreement or “treaty” to obligate the United States and its citizens to comply with international climate change mandates. It will involve a measure of “legal magic” to impose these obligations on the U.S. without Congressional approval. But what’s new? Executive orders, overriding Constitutional guarantees, is what we’ve come to expect. Hopefully the airstrikes in Syria will turn out to have been more than a temporary distraction to conceal what actually motivates current leadership; a move to shackle our economy and enslave we the people under the auspices of “global warming.”
Genocide against Christians, Kurds and even Muslims who aren’t promoting the caliphate? Decapitating people like crazy, even Americans and Brits on video for propaganda value; mowing down scores of people into ditches; marking the homes, Nazi style, of non-Muslims; taunting, threatening the United States; encouraging Muslims among us to ambush military personnel at their homes, “and slaughter them.” Let’s be clear. There’s nothing Islamic about it. And uhhhh, we’ll be looking for boots from somewhere to destroy, or degrade, or manage…
Then you read what the Washington Post published today. They can’t keep the top people at the Department of Homeland Security. Morale is terrible, the working environment dysfunctional, and they can make more in the private sector. These are the ones responsible for monitoring communications that would tip off a planned attack by the terrorists on the United States. Then there were the hearings on Capitol Hill this week, when the head of that agency couldn’t think of any instances off the top of his head where people from terrorist regions had infiltrated the southern border. There were 474 of them detained (who knows how many got through) this year alone, but he couldn’t think of any off the top of his head.
We’ve never seen anything quite like this. Every current and former military official is embarrassed and frustrated. They all say the official “strategy” is not a plan for success. They all say it is a big mistake to tell the enemy what you will or won’t do in advance. That has only resulted in additional re-affirmation of what the U.S.A. will definitely NOT do, from the man in the highest place on earth. And don’t forget Iran. Iran and its covert nuke program may actually benefit from the world’s attention shift to ISIS. Is this no longer considered a clear and imminent danger?
There have been times, however few and far between, when it would have been inspiring and fantastic to have had Friends in High Places. Right here, right now, not so much. Those in the highest of earthly places obviously have priorities that have nothing to do with the Laws of Nature, or their Constitutional duties. Friends in High Places is the title of the message on CD by Garner Ted Armstrong that we hope you’ll want this month. It doesn’t take a scholar or historian to figure out how badly things will go over the next few years. The failures of socialist ideology wreaking economic havoc in Europe and here in the United States combined with the scourge of manic Islamic hatred will bring the tribulation currently sweeping across the Middle East to the western world, and to America. Bible prophecy predicts it, and our national obsession with everything against God’s Laws guarantees it. We’ll need Friends in much Higher Places than earthly offices.
However, there are incredibly brighter days, in fact a whole new world on the other side when God’s Kingdom will be established on earth. That’s what the Feast of Tabernacles and the Last Great Day depict, as well as a reminder of Israel’s escape from Egypt and years in the wilderness, symbolic of our own personal journey. That’s where our attention will turn as we continue to WATCH the confluence of events leading toward fulfilment of Bible prophecy.
Sincerely,
Mark Armstrong
